Eliza Harris rarely sees other bicyclists as she pedals to her job in downtown Orlando, especially during the hot, humid, rainy summer months.

Though she only occasionally has a rude motorist buzz too close or honk a horn for no reason, recent studies indicate she would be much safer in her daily commute if more bicycles were on the road with her.

And the magic number appears to be 200, according to a report released by the University of Colorado in Denver.

"Drivers behave a lot differently when you have a lot of bicyclists around," said Wesley Marshall, an assistant professor of civil engineering at the Denver campus of the University of Colorado.

Marshall is the co-author of a report that looked at the relationship between bicyclists and motorists and the frequency of wrecks between the two in Boulder, a college town where about 12 percent of its more than 100,000 residents ride regularly.

@former poster Certainly worth reading. However, most motorists are not interested in seeing things from a cyclist's perspective. Most motorists simply want cyclists to be gone. Cyclists cause drivers to slow down, pay attention, etc. More than 99% of cyclists are also motorists. Less than...

Any intersection in Boulder that had 200 bicyclists passing through each day saw a significant decrease in collisions between cars and bikes, the report concluded. Accidents, he said, dropped by two-thirds on average. Studies in bike-centric cities in Europe have come to similar conclusions, he said.

The reason for the reduction in accidents?

There are two possibilities, Marshall said: Motorists are used to seeing bikes, so they watch for them. And bicyclists might gravitate to areas that are safer for them.

Boulder, Marshall said, has been constructing bike-only paths, building underpasses beneath busy roads and adding bike lanes to streets for nearly 30 years.

"It's not something that happened overnight," he said.

That's the good news for Metro Orlando, which started adding bike paths and lanes during the 1990s and has been increasing the push in recent years.

Despite those efforts, Central Florida still ranks among the most dangerous areas in the country for bicyclists. Accidents involving bikes and cars in Orange, Seminole and Osceola counties rose more than 40 percent during 2007-13, from about 500 to just shy of 800, according to statistics kept by the MetroPlan transportation-planning organization.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates the number of work riders at about 500 in the city of Orlando, which boasts a population of 250,000.

Bike experts say many of the roads in the region are designed solely for cars, with multiple lanes encouraging high speeds that do not mix with bicycles. Some bikers also ignore traffic laws, running lights and stop signs and traveling against traffic.

And motorists across Central Florida are not used to sharing the road with bikes.

"When there are a lot of cyclists on the road, drivers do take notice," said Amanda Day, project director of Bike/Walk Central Florida. "They become attentive, double-check their blind spots and adjust their driving behavior. The road becomes much safer, presumably for everyone, including the driver."

Becky Afonso, interim director of the Florida Bicycle Association, said the biggest problem in most accidents and near-misses across the state is that motorists often do not see cyclists on the road until it is too late.

"You need visibility," she said.

Harris, who makes it a point to obey the traffic laws, said she sometimes will ride in the middle of a lane to make sure she is not out of the motorists' line of sight, especially if the drivers have another full lane in which to pass her.

That's much better, she said, than being yelled at or nearly hit as a car speeds by.

"It's unnerving, it's unpleasant, it's scary," she said of close encounters, "but it's not that often."

We've put together a series of pages to show you traffic cameras along your commute. For those looking for traffic cameras from the East-West Expressway, Greeneway, BeachLine and 429, you can view them on fl511.com MORNING COMMUTESEVENING COMMUTES Interstate 4Interstate 4 Deland to downtown Sanford...